So I am sitting here enjoying my Cary and some nice Holly Cole "Temptations" and the sound starts to crackle....I look over at the Cary and the far right KT88 looks like it is going Nova!
Naturally, that is the one tube I do not have a backup for.....Order sent in, maybe they'll be here by Tuesday or Thursday. Another great sounding but short lived Gold Lion. Last one's I order. I had the same issue with the 6922's.
On the plus side I have been thinking about pulling my old Denon AVR-5800 out of the box for some dedicated 2 channel use. 200 watts/ch of pure 2 channel power. It is huge and weighs in at 62 lbs. From Michael Fremer's 3/29/2001 Stereophile review of the receiver:
"If you plug an analog (gasp!) source into the AVR-5800—a turntable or perhaps the analog outputs of an SACD player—the signal is delivered to the amplifiers in the analog domain without any A/D and D/A conversion. Furthermore, when the input is analog, power to the digital section is turned off. The attention paid by Denon in their attempt to get a complex multichannel receiver to behave like a high-performance, 2-channel, high-end audio product is, in my experience, unprecedented."
I have to say having so much power and reserve really makes the bass uber solid with the Vandersteen's. Nothing like a full range speaker that is well amplified. However, in Pure Direct mode with no lights on it has no visual sex appeal compared to a properly appointed tube amp!
It does sound great, I have to say. Very different from the tubes I have been enjoying with Decware and Cary. It'll be fun to listen to the difference for a few days. Nice to have choices.